He sells shells
The governor calls his newest gambling initiative the Golden Opportunities Challenge. We prefer to call it the Ed Rendell Shell Game.
The governor, who is clearly ready, willing and able to shill for almost any gambling proposal, is unwilling to bank exclusively on his proposal to allow slot machines to be installed at Pennsylvania racetracks as a solution to the state’s financial crisis.
No, the governor last week unveiled his new “challenge” program, under which businesses will be asked to buy lottery tickets and give them out to employees as bonuses for hard work.
Rendell apparently believes the program could raise more than $400 million a year because the companies would have to buy the tickets – at face value – from the state. He had the nerve to portray business involvement in this ridiculous scheme as almost patriotic, noting that it would get more Pennsylvanians “involved” in the lottery.
As if that were a good thing!
Anyone who can work a calculator knows that state-run lotteries are both bad bets – on average they return in winnings only half of the money gamblers wager for a one-in-many-million chance of winning the grand prize – and bad policy.
The games are addictive and prey on people who least can afford to be playing. And when those people lose their jobs, end up on welfare, are forced into bankruptcy and renege on their debts because they have blown the rent money on lottery tickets, guess who gets stuck with the bill?
That’s right, the rest of the state’s taxpayers.
We’d also suggest that before Pennsylvania’s business leaders sign up for Rendell’s latest scheme out of some misplaced sense of loyalty or obligation, they ask their employees whether they would prefer cash bonuses to state lottery tickets. We have a pretty good idea of what working men and women across the state would say. They also might want to check with their stockholders to see whether they believe corporate cash should be going for lottery tickets.
We do not envy Rendell’s problem.
He did not create the state’s $2 billion financial mess. It took years of overspending during the Ridge years to create the current fiscal disaster. It was easy to overspend in those days because the money was pouring in as the stock market soared and business boomed throughout the late ’90s.
Now it’s time to face the music.
Legalizing slot machines and expanding the $2 billion industry the state lottery has become are a cowardly way out of the trouble we find ourselves in. The hard and honest route is to live within our means, by making the hard choices to cut spending where we can and then to raise taxes fairly and across the board to pay for the programs and services Pennsylvanians believe are most important.
This latest proposal is wrong, governor.